Related Assets are assets connected to other assets, even if they don’t share any tags and aren’t in the same category. Here you’ll focus on how to define relationships between assets so when you begin publishing assets, the Related Assets widget can display those relationships.
Related Assets Widget
By default, the Related Assets widget displays any related asset of the asset selected in the Asset Publisher. If you don’t want to show every related asset, you can configure what content relationships to display. To do this, follow these steps:
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Go to the Related Assets app and select the Options icon (
) in the upper right corner of the application and click Configuration.
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Under the Setup → Asset Selection tab, set the type of asset(s) to display using the Asset Type menu. The default value is set to Any.
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You can narrow the scope of the app to display any single category of asset type or select multiple assets from the menu.
Filter options set minimum requirements for displaying assets by their categories, tags, and custom fields. Ordering and Grouping organizes assets using the same criteria. Display settings customize how the app shows assets: by title, in a table, by abstract, or full content. You can convert assets to different document types like ODT, PDF, and RTF. You can choose to show metadata fields such as author, modification date, tags, and view count. You can even enable RSS subscriptions and customize their display settings.
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When you’re finished setting the Source and Filter options, click Save.
Now that you’ve configured the Related Assets widget to display specific content types, you must define the relationships for your assets. Here’s a simple example of defining related assets for a web content article and then displaying those related assets.
Suppose you own a gift shop at the Lunar Resort, and you want all your shop’s assets to appear when an asset is clicked. You must define relationships between your content, so when an asset is clicked, its related assets are appear alongside the clicked asset. Here’s how to do it:
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Create a blog entry explaining your gift shop’s new apparel and a photo of the moon, just so consumers are aware that you offer the only gift shop on a desolate rock orbiting the Earth!
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Create a web content article describing your shop. Once you’ve given your article a title and some content, open the Related Assets dropdown menu. Click Select, choose Blogs Entry, and select the blog you created. Click Select again, choose Basic Document, and select the photo of the moon. Click Publish to publish your web content article.
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Now that those assets are created, you can relate the blog entry and photo to your web content article. Navigate to your article in Site Administration → Content & Data → Web Content.
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You’ve now defined relationship with your three assets. Click the Add icon (
) at the top of your page in the Control Menu, select Widgets, and add the Related Assets and Asset Publisher widgets to the page. Don’t panic: related assets don’t appear until you select an asset in the Asset Publisher.
Figure 1: Select an asset in the Asset Publisher to see its related assets displayed in the Related Assets application.
Once you select an asset, its related assets appear in the Related Assets app, as in the image above. If you want more detail, you can place two Related Assets widgets on the page and name one Related Blogs and the other Related Photos.
Figure 2: Related Assets applications can be configured to display specific content.
Next, you’ll learn more about how to use the Asset Publisher.